When Patrick Buckingham moved from Clifford Chance's
financial services regulatory group to Lehman Brothers in 2004,
he was excited at the role. Having been seconded to Morgan
Stanley in 2002 for six months, he had got a taste of working
at a bank and was keen to get on with working on Lehman's
trading floor among the other transactional lawyers.
But the work he found most interesting was always related
specifically to regulation, hence his position at Clifford
Chance. When a space became available in central compliance, he
was able not only to shift departments but to actually create a
role for himself that hadn't existed before – that of
regulatory counsel.
It's something many lawyers dream of, particularly those
stuck in a rigid hierarchy. Although there was spare headcount
in the compliance department, Buckingham felt that the bank
really needed a central regulatory counsel to deal with the
flood of...